The Active Ageing Index and Its Relation to the Quality of Life of Older Adults (poster)

The AAI is a powerful tool for assessing the potential of ageing societies in European countries and enabling to assess the position of their older adults. It co-creates the current form of ageing and the concept of active ageing. The goal of active ageing is to improve older adults´ quality of life, therefore this chapter analyses the relation between activity and quality of life. The analytical part focuses on testing the connection between the AAI, its indicators and subjective well-being, both at a general level and at the level of individual European countries. The results of correlation coefficients and principal component analysis (PCA) showed a significant correlation but also some problematic indicators in contribution to the quality of life. Particularly employment has been identified as the exception among other dimensions having a significant position in the index, but the results cast doubts on its relationship with quality of life. Putting significance on employment leads to overestimation of the position of countries which despite considerable employment rate of older adults are behind other countries in other indicators. An ill-considered interpretation of the AAI could contribute to a reduced concept of active ageing leading to a number of unintended consequences.